“Survive,” Andrew said. “You're why I'm still here like this. It's difficult. And once you're safe, I can stop dreaming at last.”
Survive…stop dreaming… Her brother was a ghost, and Lucy-Anne remembered walking across that strange landscape on London's outskirts, the place where countless bodies had been buried, and knowing that beneath her feet lay her mother and father. The certainty had been shocking, but she'd known it was true because she had already dreamt it. Her life now was starting to feel like one long dream. Her imagination had always taken her to strange places, and sometimes she'd found it teasing her when she could not recall whether a memory was a dream, or vice versa. Many times through her childhood she'd remembered going somewhere with her family that no one else recalled, or believed an event was a dream when her parents and Andrew had very clear memories of it. She'd never thought anything of it. It had felt natural. It was ironic that now she was starting to understand herself and how she dreamed, it felt more alien than ever.
“I'm exhausted,” she said. “I can't run forever. I need to…I have to…” To dream, she thought. As she pulled away from Andrew and her surroundings, she could not be certain whether she was falling asleep, or waking up.
People cry out. Flames roar. Someone is wailing as they stagger back and forth across the road, grasping at guts drooping from a terrible wound in their stomach. Their features and hair are burnt away, but Lucy-Anne recognises the clothes.
Nomad is running across the street towards her. She jumps a blazing motorcycle, leaping further than is possible, and barely seems to touch the road as she lands and rushes on. She is the focus of movement in the street, the eye of the storm, and all flames lean away from her.
Lucy-Anne holds up her hands and tries to speak, but her voice has been silenced. My dream, this is my dream, and I can change everything!
But though she knows that she has been here before, she has no control over the scene. She cannot quench the flames, nor can she divert Nomad from her course. Perhaps they have been heading towards this meeting since Doomsday.
Gunfire sounds in the distance, voices, screams, and nearby the pounding of heavy footsteps.
Turn away, she thinks, but Nomad runs onwards. Step aside. But the strange woman is determined.
Lucy-Anne opens her mouth, but cannot scream as Nomad runs into her and knocks her to the ground. She tries to punch, but her arm remains by her side, not obeying her dream.
Nomad raises a fist and brings it smashing down on Lucy-Anne's throat.
A burst of light—
The Thames flows sluggishly before her, and to her left she can just see the curve of the London Eye above some buildings. She looks around in a panic for Nomad, knowing that when she sees her the blast will come. There is no stopping it. A sun will grow in London and consume everything, and however much Lucy-Anne wills her dream to change, can she really confront such power?
Nomad killed me, she thinks, feeling the impact on her throat, pressing her hand there, and then she sees her friends. She bursts into tears because they are so solid, so there. They are approaching the river with several other people and they come with purpose. Jack looks older than before, and there's something about him that reminds her of Nomad.
They are much further along the riverbank, and closer to her she sees a group of Choppers squatting down behind concrete benches and a fallen wall. They are watching. And aiming.
We have to go, a voice says. She turns and Andrew is there, walking along the riverbank past a line of long tables covered with the swollen, rotting remains of books. Lucy-Anne, you don't have long.
But…
She looks at Jack and her friends again, and the other people, and the Choppers slowly standing, ready to fire.
But not now!
Andrew has reached her. He looks more real now than he did back in the reality of London. Perhaps this is how she will best see him from now on—in dreams.